Postgame Thoughts: Bears vs. Cardinals (11.08.09)

Well, it happened again. For the second time in three weeks, the Bears went out and laid an egg. The score may have been closer against the Cardinals than it was against the Bengals, but don’t let it deceive you. The Bears got blown out.

I’m only briefly going to mention the offense because even though they made their fair share of mistakes, they also were put in the unfortunate position of playing from behind the entire game. That’s not fair to them and nobody can expect much when they face such a huge deficit.

Jay Cutler did as much as he possibly could leading this offense against a defense that knew they weren’t going to run the football. Because of how badly the Bears were losing, they couldn’t even attempt to get the running game going. Cutler had over 350 yards and 3 touchdowns, but that’s a product of playing from behind all game.

Greg Olsen picked up three touchdowns and it’s about time he showed up. Maybe today’s performance could help jump start the Cutler-Olsen connection we all thought we were getting in the preseason.

The receivers played about the same as they have all season. Their numbers were inflated, but we know why.

As for the offensive line, they were a bit better than they’ve been recently, but they’re still no good.

Now I want to get to the defense. I’m going to try to contain my emotions because I’m seconds from putting my fist through the monitor when I think about the defense’s performance. This is an unnerving unit. I don’t think I’ve ever seen as bad a Bears defense as the one we’ve come to know this season. Yes, I’m including the Dick Jauron and Dave Wannstedt teams. To get not only beaten badly, but pushed around and scored upon at will for two out of three straight weeks is embarrassing and inexcusable.

The personnel is not there. It hasn’t been identified in the draft and hasn’t been developed by this coaching staff. The system is an archaic, outdated monstrosity. The Cover 2 is just a coverage and it’s used by everybody. But it can’t be relied on and be your base system because teams know how to exploit it. The Tampa 2, or the Lovie 2, or whatever you want to call it is just not working and it’s making the Bears’ defense look awful.

I’ve had all game to think about what I’m going to say, so I see no need to rant and rave about this team. They’re not a good team and they have a couple years of rebuilding ahead of them. I’ll state it again — the personnel is not in place and it can’t all be established in one off-season.

Because the Bears have no first or second round pick in the 2010 draft, it makes no sense to root for them to lose games for a higher draft pick, because all that will be doing is giving the Denver Broncos a higher draft pick and more satisfaction in their half of the Cutler deal. If you’d like to root for a higher 3rd-round pick, be my guest.

One thing I know — and I’m not the type of person to do this but I know many Bears fans will — there will be a lot of angry Bears fans hoping for as bad a season as possible so that it puts pressure on Jerry Angelo to fire Lovie Smith — even though that scenario is highly unlikely.